Ok, so I'm not the sharpest bulb in the shed, but I don't need to find the remains of Jimmy the Greek at some Jersey track to know that he shouldn't have said that at his last union meeting. An' that the money was well spent on the search. He's dead, D-E-A-D, dead.

Absolutes? Are you talking about the Catholic Church? The church with the catechism. The one that says: "Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions," The one that goes on to say: ""He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters."" That church? Doesn't sound too absolute to me. No robot in this pew. Heck! Even you can be Catholic with a little bit of faith.
You go on to say, "There is reason to believe that they came from god....". Will the sun come up tomorrow or will you sit on your fence till it hits the horizon before you will answer?

"So, if god has supreme authority and we have to obey and use this as our moral compass instead of our own intellect, then why are there so many compass directions?"
We don't have to obey. We have free will - an' your the perfect example of that. As for "so many compass directions" God's compass points "up". It is man's conscience and free will that makes the choice, at times, they choose the great circle route. And true, some get lost even with the good compass in their hands.
Islam? A Moslem who uses his right conscience in his faith chooses that path gets to where he's going.

"What I pick up from you is that you have never seriously questioned the entire concept of god, or spirituality or religion (all of which are differ rent) You follow what you are told as the formula that you were culturalised (like the Moslem in Saudi) and are convinced that if you follow the "catholic" formula you will be rewarded. This gives you comfort and I applaud it for that."
I have. Honest injun. And you are right. I was brought up Catholic, but I CHOOSE to remain Catholic because I feel, it's compass will gives me the best directions. Am I comfortable with that? Hell, yeah!

"Religion is a fairy tale for adults who in the rest of their lives would never take anything on faith, but rather require proof." Love. Prove that to me.

"I simply wait for things to be proven. " I hope that's not a picket fence you're sitting on. You'll be there a long time.

"If you had been brought up in a society that worshiped ME, you likely would not question it. Everyone around you wild reinforce it and all the public holidays would give it validity. At least you could SEE that I existed. That is more than any god in which I am familiar. My point really here is that if you will believe by faith then you really have no compass on what to believe, it is all a matter of where you were born."
What have you ever done for me that would let me put my faith in you? Will you die on the cross for me?What's a holiday compared to eternal salvation? Give me a break. What you advocate is chaos.

As for the rest of your post, I grow tired of it. Sure there are errors, gross errors. Abuses, always was. Made by men who have free will and individual conscience and who have a broken or no compass. Some can and will be corrected. I have faith in man too.
Freud is/was a wacko. Life to me has more meaning than just the mere gratification of the senses. Free sex brings only disease, violence and death. There's an absolute!
Your "nitpicking" at the end tells me you are missing the big picture and have not studied the Way for quite some time.

"It is because they are in a particular mood of reaction and revolt that they have a motive for making out that all that is white is a dirty grey and the black not so black as it is painted." Chesterton

__________________Terrence P. Tuffy

Be steady in your convictions, and be a person of your word.
Book of Sirach 5:10

The Gay issue of today is akin to the racial issue of the sixties and the women's sufferage movement back in the early 20th century. After this is settled and Gays attain the same rights everyone else gets (just like women and blacks already have), what's next?

Perhaps it'll be the life on Mars problem we're facing. Everyone knows the Earth will someday run out of room for it's ever increasing population. To survive, mankind will need to find an alternative planet to move to. The first settlers will inhabit the land and make contact with any life already there. You know, offer them some earthly trinkets in trade for their land. Next the Real Estate salespeople will arrive to sell plots to the settlers. Then the shysters, er lawyers, will show up to tell the settlers how much they need to pay them to insure their plots are theirs. Perhaps it'll start out small with time shares or the like, but once the Golf Course builders get their machines running, things will start booming. Of course, all this building will cause an energy crisis. After all, Mars is how much further from the sun than earth? Imagine the price of oil there!!!!! The overhead alone will outstrip the benefit. Um, well you see Mrs. Bennett, we actually used sixhundred thousand gallons of oil to deliver your five hundred gallons of heating oil. That's why the price is twelve million dollars, but then there're the Earth government excise taxes, the Martian importing taxes and the Space Transporters delivery charges. Oh, wait! I've just been told the price has gone up to eighteen million. Seems there was an unexpected solar flareup that hit the asteroid belt and blew up two of our tanker shuttles. You know our motto, no cost is too large or to small not to pass on to our customers. But, I may be going too far into the future to help the current discussion.

One by one, the states will eventually give Gays the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. If they were to march on Washington, they'd turn the wading pool fuscia and drape rainbow robes on Lincoln. There'd be so much leather in town, everyone would forget the pork barrel projects and ask "where's the beef"? About then, Mayor Crackhead would come out and declare amnesty for everyone who mooned the White House. Yes, it could get ugly, but in the end (heh,heh) they'd get theirs!

__________________Bob Johnston
Even being good for nothing, makes you good at something!

Pedophiles will want access to your prepubescent teen claiming they are sexual oppressed and that you're violating their right to free sexual expression. They are already trying to lower the age of consent to 12 in Holland. It won't be long before NAMBLA jumps on the band wagon.__________________Terrence P. Tuffy

Be steady in your convictions, and be a person of your word.
Book of Sirach 5:10

Pedophiles will want access to your prepubescent teen claiming they are sexual oppressed and that you're violating their right to free sexual expression. They are already trying to lower the age of consent to 12 in Holland. It won't be long before NAMBLA jumps on the band wagon.

"Teen" is defined by 13-19yos. Puberty is raging in both sexes by 12 so there is no such thing as a prepubescent teen. Nature determines the beginning of human sex life at puberty, but we do everything we can to suppress that as long as we can in our society. No law can delay the onset of puberty and sexual awakening. Travel the world and you find better models of how sexuality is handled. In most of modern Europe, you would have been fully aware of sex well before puberty and the taboo would not drive you to hide it. You also would be more comfortable with early experimentation and realize what you need to do to protect yourself both from diseases and unwanted partners. You would have seen boobs bared regularly on TV and not the childish outcry over Janice Jackson. Sex would be a normal part of your lives instead of something you had to run off to the shed to do. The catholic church teaches nothing but abstinence which is just plain stupid in my opinion. By denying the possibility of birth control and condoms they try to fulfill their own dire warnings of pregnancy and disease. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS RUN BY SEXUALLY DEPRIVED, JEALOUS OLD MEN WHO WANT US ALL TO JOIN THEIR ANTI-NATURAL DENIAL OF SEXUAL PLEASURE.

The indignation people have with the Catholic Church on moral issues is because they find their urge for sexual gratification so intense. It is very hard for most of us, not just you, to see this light of truth, when you/we judge the Church from this indignation alone. We need to look at Catholic faith in its totality. The big picture. Are we able to believe that Jesus did actually resurrect, and that the disciples did experience feel and touch the triumphant resurrected Christ? Bare with me. There is nothing that will convince me about their complete transformation after the event and quiet submission to martyrdom, if the resurrected Jesus and all that he stood for did not make absolute sense to them. You might argue that there are other Christian Churches also that believe in the same Jesus, but are more liberal in sexual matters. Before we judge which Church is the true Church with regard to this issue, just look at the world around us, and see if contraception has indeed enhanced the love and respect between couples or has it actually turned sex into a commodity. Are our families and our children more secure sexually, or are they more exploited? Doesn’t contraception actually encourage sexual promiscuity, by spreading a culture of free ‘risk-free’ sex? If our society did indeed heed the lone voice of Catholic Church in sexual morality, wouldn’t our children be in a safer, more secure environment, sexually? We could both site studies with opposite results till we are blue in the face. It's what we perceive from our experience(s) that is our deciding factor. Sex is sacred only when approached in the spirit of the original sacrament of marriage when God created us “man and woman” and sanctified the sexual union between them with the ability to create new life. This kind of sex sets off fireworks and makes the earth move. Can anyone forget the first time they held their child? Prove Love, I think that that is a close as anyone gets to it. Gay sex has no place in the sanctifying realm of marriage. Neither does any other form of heterosexual behavior outside the sanctity of holly marriage. I know, all of this may sound "hokie", but not if it is perfection we seek.

I said this before and I'll say it again. Given the concupiscence that we inherited, and when the entire world is running after ‘fun’, it is very hard to swim against the tide and follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Satan will keep snapping at our heels till we breathe our very last. But, trust in the mercy and compassion of God. It is doable. Life here on earth has more meaning to it than just the gratification of the senses. Walk one step towards Jesus, and he will walk several steps towards you and hold your hand along the way.

You ask for proof of God. Most people who ask for proof of God ask for tangibles. i.e. Let Mary live, Let me hit the lottery. Let me pass this test. God is not of this world. Jesus came to take us out of the world. God won't go against the very nature he created. God wants us to ask Him for great things. Let Mary have eternal life. Let me have the riches of wisdom, peace, charity, kindness, self control. Let me have the fortitude to pass every test. An' if we come to obey God's commands - Then you will have your proof. __________________Terrence P. Tuffy

Be steady in your convictions, and be a person of your word.
Book of Sirach 5:10

I applaud your fortitude in defending the truth. I don't believe reason will ever lead us to moral truth. The arguments I have read (at least those I think I understand, a very small subset) seem too convoluted to be of much help day-to-day. Moreover, I'm not smart enough to articulate even that which I think I understand.

There is no point in arguing with people who come at life from the culture of death. I'm content to see who comes out on top in Pascal's wager.

No one likes to be told what they are doing is wrong. Those who stand against morality usually do so from a basis of hedonism and their own particular desires. They can point to particular examples of why their way is best. For example, "Europe is less sexually repressed." Well, I've spent a lot of time in Europe, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing. Along with sex, drugs, euthanasia, abortion, and tolerance of just about everything short of murder, it appears to me that European culture is imploding. When anything goes, you have to accept anything that comes.

The proponents of the culture of death are sometimes laughably inconsistent. When Peter Singer, the great euthanasia proponent at Princeton, was asked why he didn't seek euthanasia for his mother, who is in an advanced state of Alzheimer's, he was appalled at the question. He replied "That's my mother you're talking about!" Sauce for the goose, Peter? Whose mother should be a candidate for euthanasia? Who decides, you?

Dick Lamm, former governor of Colorado, once remarked that people should have the common decency to terminate their own lives when they reach their mid-60s before they become a drain on society. Well, Dick is getting kind of old, and as far as I know he isn't stocking up on rat poison.

Richie, You and I went to MC together. I have to say that I would have to open the year book to remember your face, age and all, but your name rings a bell. I would do that but that I am in Paris right now after enjoying a very nice (hedonistic) evening and my yearbook is at home. When I was at MC I went to mass almost every day. I was devout beyond devout. So please don't even think that if I just "found" my faith I would be OK. I made an honest journey and none of you have the answers to questions that you should have as adults following a fairytale religion. 'God was perfect but he created angels because he was lonely and well some of them were not perfect and after the great heavenly battle god sent em to hell now they are devils and to replace them he created the world and man but even though god was perfect he made screwed up creatures that made original sin which even though they didn't actually do anything they are born with but then Jesus had to die on the cross to fix it and well languages came from the tower of Babel and when ever this story makes no sense we just say that man is too stupid to understand god so shut up and accept it'...Sorry, but I am too adult to accept this. Peter Pan makes more logical sense... No to the culture of death...you mean Abrahamic religions I assume....because atheists and hedonists (my favorite category) etc believe in fulfillment in LIFE. Catholics, Moslems, etc believe the REAL life is the AFTER LIFE. We are the culture of life. Look at all the religion based wars and terror....all based on the fallacy that god rewards the warrior in death. C'mon, if you are going to try to justify your religion and all you gave up for it, why not be a little more realistic. All that being said, MC was a better educational experience because we were disciplined (and boy did I need that), they were dedicated (for whatever human reason and it worked) and we were the cream of the crop. But I can honestly say that the years I was put back in my own personal and sexual exploration in the flower of my youth, can never be replaced. But life is imperfect and given the choice of repeating it as it was vs. going to public school, there is no contest. And you don't need a god for any of it....

Listen folks. Remember "Live and let live"? Or, "Can't we all just get along"? I happen to know and call some gay folks "friend". They come from both genders and some are low key, while others are outed. They are decent and caring friends who don't ask me to accept them for what they are, but rather for who they are. Everyone deserves companionship. Most find it in their man/woman relationship, others in man/man or woman/woman. Having a caring person to share one's life with is all anyone hopes for. I think in most cases, it beats ending up with two dozen cats for companionship. Remember the post about those in glass houses?

The last thing needed is morality issues from the moral majority, which has been said to be neither. Keep the religious views out, they just amount to adding to the politics.

__________________Bob Johnston
Even being good for nothing, makes you good at something!

Thanks Bob, John as well as Terrance & Richie. I most agree with Bob. Like Bob I have many friends who are gay and have lived with both gay and straight housemates. Most of my friends are conservative Republicans, some fundamentalists. The ones who are both are clearly the ones I disagree with the most. But they are all good Friends. My problems come with intolerance. I am intolerant of intolerants. I have no problem that people take a path in their lives that makes no sense to me. I just get very upset when they propose to make it law. BTW, I hope you all take advantage of my website and the pages and pics on the bottom of the home page...... http://www.chezmoi.net Barry

Originally Posted by GrannyI know I'm on record on this board about same-sex marriage. No deal. Common sense.

I see you've adopted the John Kerins style of debate. Claim higher intellect, knowledge or sense than your opponent. This is a departure from your usual "let me baffle them with words, expressions and references that most people will never understand - clarity is not as important as the illusion of being highly intellectual" approach.

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